


The Rift Taketh Away

by kiddywonkus



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:14:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiddywonkus/pseuds/kiddywonkus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Negative rift spikes catch Ianto's attention, and he finds that he's not the only one hiding secrets in Torchwood.</p><p>Season One Spoilers Only.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thirteen Roman Soldiers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-season 1

Lisa had always said Ianto was sexy and he rather thought she meant it. Not at first, of course. It took him a long while to realise that a pasty, Welsh boy was not the horrid ghost-like thing he had previously thought. That people actually found it attractive. That Lisa, beautiful Lisa, would share his bed willingly. That she would stroke his face and look into his eyes with a longing he knew he returned. She always knew what to say, and how to say it. No matter how out of place he felt on the London streets, Lisa could always make him feel like himself, make him feel at home.

Even in the dump they called Torchwood Three, knowing Lisa was there sometimes made him feel safe, almost as if the Battle of Canary Wharf had never happened. The feeling would pass though when he remembered where he was. It was impossible to feel safe in Torchwood. He watched everyone he knew die at the place he thought was impenetrable. Torchwood was supposed to save humanity, not be the first helpless victims.

He didn't know how he survived. He should have died right there in the thick of it as he tried to find Lisa amongst the rubble. Humanity, except for his own, didn't seem to matter then. Without Lisa, he didn't have any.

But Lisa…

She was down in the most secretive and disused places of Torchwood Three, reminding him that no one was safe.

"That's why you like it," Lisa had said, though he wasn't ready to believe that then, just as he wasn't ready to believe that she thought he was sexy. But she was right. There was no doubt in his mind that he wouldn't have gotten where he was if Captain Jack Harkness wasn't more than a little bit seduced by his looks.

 _He_ _'_ _s_ _seduced_ _by_ _everyone_ _'_ _s_ _looks_ , he thought miserably.

He remembered the day he had been hired, and quickly clenched his fist as he tried to block out the memory. He didn't let Jack see his abhorrence as he left the warehouse. He should have been elated. He had found a way to help Lisa. Instead, he was disgusted at the tension that surged across his body as he came in close contact with his soon-to-be boss while they rolled away from a plummeting pterodactyl. Trust Jack to turn a routine dinosaur retrieval into some sort of messed up love triangle.

As if it knew he was thinking of her, Myfanwy screeched from somewhere high above.

Ianto wondered how he summoned up the courage to even chase the pterodactyl. Desperation, he supposed. Lisa used to be one that did the dangerous stuff. Ianto was an office boy, a nobody. Ianto exhaled a long breath of air that he didn't even know he was holding. These were not the thoughts he wanted to be having, but the Torchwood Three team had been holed up in the Hub for days now and they wouldn't leave. It meant that he was stuck inside his head for the time being, and his head wasn't the most pleasant of places to be. The last rift activity had registered a week ago, and it had only been one stray Weevil, which he named Posh. He only had Sporty left, and he would have all the Spice Girls.

He wished that that thought entertained him even a little. He found himself thinking in the ways he would always think, and saying the things he would usually say, but not as often. Worse yet, his little jokes stopped amusing him. That used to be his one solace in life. Even if no one got it, at least he made himself laugh. Lisa used to tease him about it too. He liked that.

"You're not even laughing," she would say, "but I can tell you think you're hilarious."

"I am," he would reply seriously.

She would laugh, and squeeze his arm fondly. Lisa loved him. He loved Lisa.

Ianto rubbed his arm, wishing that the team would go away.

"Ianto?" The unmistakable American accent of Jack came over his comm. "Coffee in the board room?"

"Yes, sir." Ianto smiled. This meant something was up. This meant he could be left alone.

Ianto wasn't really sure how much Jack knew about his previous position, aside from the fact he was a junior researcher. The things he was asked to do now were never in his purview before. He was never asked to make coffee before, and he was certainly never asked to dispose of bodies. His old job consisted of sitting at a computer, and monitoring temporal and spatial anomalies.

That job had been demanding enough, but now it felt like he never left the Hub. Though, he felt hardly in a position to complain. At least there he could feel Lisa's presence humming through the electricity, which was better than going home to his empty apartment to mindlessly watch television. The only time he ever truly felt alone was when someone would speak to him, and he supposed this was because they rarely did. He never knew what to say, and it reminded him of how isolated he really was.

Entering the boardroom with a tray of steaming hot coffees, he listened to Jack give a speech about Roman legionnaires roaming about the countryside. There was no acknowledgement as he set each cup down, aside from Jack, who usually took this opportunity to leer his thanks by either a winking or giving him a long, lingering look that started from the tips of his wing-tipped shoes and ended at his mouth.

Ianto's stomach knotted every time this happened, and he could remember the warmth of Jack's body cruelly tangled together with Lisa's screams. He saw the flashes of explosion from Torchwood One in the back of his eyes.

"Ianto."

He closed his eyes, and forced himself to return to the dim glow of the monitors of Torchwood Three. "Yes, sir."

"I'm going to need you to monitor the rift, let us know if more are coming in. Though I'm not opposed to few Roman soldiers, I'm pretty sure Cardiff is. Don't know why though…"

Ianto nodded, and ignored the rest of Jack's story, which involved some sort of three-way with a Roman soldier and an alien posing as a lady of high rank. Not surprisingly, he proclaimed it to have been fantastic.

When they left, he rushed down to check on Lisa. She didn't say anything. She didn't even look at him. Things were getting worse, and Ianto knew it. Sometimes, she would be catatonic for hours even after her sedative would wear off. He grabbed her hand, and kissed it softly. "I'll be back soon, yeah?"

Then, he sat down at the monitor.

"Shit!" A loud yell came in through his comm as he tapped his ear to see how things were doing. It was Owen. "He's got a sword!"

"Tell me about it!" chimed in Jack's voice. He sounded like he was running. "Big one too."

Ianto rolled his eyes, and stared at the monitors. He could almost hear the smirk in Jack's voice. The last rift activity had spiked approximately when the soldiers had appeared. But then he saw something curious. There was one spike that went the opposite direction.

The energy spikes, especially the unusual ones, still made him jump sometimes. He had to remind himself that these were random, and not the deliberate ones he had saw in London. Ianto closed his eyes, attempting to dispel the memories. He tried to transform the terrible, deafening sounds of the explosions that haunted his thoughts into the low hum of the Hub, and the flashes of fire into the flickering computer screens.

"Ianto," Lisa had said to him, not long after he set her up in the basement of Torchwood Three, "you need help."

"Yeah. But we'll get this sorted."

"That's not what I meant." Then she drifted away on the wave of sedative he had given her.

He realised what she meant now, just as he realised everything she had said was true. Lisa -his Lisa - was always so much smarter than he was when it came to him. But that was waning now. He could feel her floating away on a current that was much too strong to fight against.

But Ianto Jones didn't give up. That was one thing Lisa said about him that he already knew. He came from nothing, a family of nothing, and a thoroughly unimpressive record of nothing. What had Jack's file on him said? Able, but not exceptional.

Ianto knew better than anyone that the best way to succeed was to come from nothing. You never gave up then. Besides, he determined from his research that Jack had a thing for untapped potential, and he really needed to get into Torchwood Three. It worked, even if no one knew anything about him; except Jack, and what little he knew, he wasn't telling anyone.

Idly, he looked the reports for the area, wondering how the newspapers were going to explain away the Roman soldiers. Instead, the news seemed more concerned with a missing child who disappeared right before her mother's eyes. Beth Ann Taylor, it seemed, had been playing in a park when she simply vanished. Her mother claimed that there had a been a great rush of wind, and she was briefly blinded by a flash of colors. When she looked for her daughter, she was no longer there. The police were investigating it as a kidnapping though the mother swore up and down there was no one else around.

He made a mental note of it, and went back down to make sure Lisa was sleeping all right. The comm in his ear continued to chirp wildly as the members rounded up the soldiers. Owen, it seemed, had been stabbed. Ianto smiled at that.

* * *

"Thirteen Roman soldiers." Jack said, leaning back in his chair to put his feet on his desk.

Fastidious as ever, Ianto moved a pile of folders that were just a little too close to Jack's muddy shoes for Ianto's liking to the right while giving Jack a disapproving look. "It's my job, then, right?"

"Ianto Jones, you surprise me. You speak Latin?"

"No."

"Then I don't know what you're going to do."

"We can't keep them in the vault, sir. It's inhuman."

"You think we can assimilate them? This isn't decades ago, or even century. This is almost two full millennia. We'd have a better chance of getting a Weevil to function in society." Jack put his hands behind his head. "What we need is an island."

"An island, sir?"

"Yeah. Romans are horrible sailors. We get them on a nice frowning rock where they can't get off, and let them live their lives on it undisturbed."

"And what shall we call that island? The Island of Reluctant But Inevitable Homosexuality?" Ianto quipped, frowning inwardly as he realised he had just stolen a joke from Jimmy Carr.

"That's a good name." Jack laughed. "You always have good names for things. That island doesn't seem like a bad place, though, does it?"

"So… you want me to find the island that could most possibly lead to a testosterone-laden orgy?"

Jack's eyes lit up as he smirked. "Yeah."

Ianto kept his face neutral as he turned to leave Jack's office.

"Oh, Ianto." Jack called. "Any unusual rift activity I should know about?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure. There was a disappearance of a girl named Beth Ann Taylor where the Romans were. The Romans didn't even register on the news. Perhaps people thought they were apart of some fancy dress party."

Jack's voice got quiet. "Beth Ann? There is nothing to link that to the rift though, is there?"

"No," Ianto said less convincingly than he would have liked.

Jack nodded, but his eyes looked as if they were a million miles away.


	2. Torchwood Taxi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-season 1.

Testosterone-laden orgy was about as far as one could get from the reality of the situation. The Romans were dirty, violent, and more than a little intrigued with Tosh, judging from their lascivious gawking anytime she walked within eyeshot. When Tosh wasn't available, the soldiers turned their attentions to Suzie, who seemed to enjoy it even less than Tosh did.

The most suitable island he could find was in the Shetlands, and we really wasn't sure how he was going to convince the Romans that it was their new home. He really wished he spoke Latin. It didn't seem right to just drug them and dump them, as Owen had so eloquently suggested, but he didn't seem to have any choice in the matter, or an alternative. Even if he could, how could he explain why it had to be the Shetland Islands?

"You could say they are finally conquering Scotland," suggested Suzie, not looking up from whatever weapon she was currently testing. "Soften the blow a bit."

"Actually," Jack said, casually leaning against the door. "Roman didn't really want to conquer Scotland. Well, not once they realised how cold it was and there were far richer pickings to be had in the East."

"Right," Ianto said, keeping a careful eye on Suzie's quarry. It was square with green markings, and it wasn't shaped like anything resembling a gun, but Ianto guessed it was. It had already accidentally fired twice since she first started researching it. There was still a deep hole in the wall opposite from the day before when it had fired last, nearly taking Owen's left ear off. "I don't even know what period of Roman history they are from."

Owen came into the room. He stopped abruptly at the threshold when he saw what Suzie was working on, and prudently stayed behind Jack.

"Judging from their clothing, the coins we found in their pocket, and their smell, I'd say somewhere in the 1st century," Jack supplied.

The three of them stared at him. While Jack certainly seemed to know everything, this stretched the imagination a bit too much.

"Right," said Owen, ignoring Jack, "if it's the Shetlands, I reckon that you can just leave them at Glasgow and let the Highlanders take care of it."

The idea was tempting to Ianto. He wasn't particularly willing to leave Lisa alone in the basement for however long it would take him to relocate the prisoners. But then again, he wasn't entirely sure anyone would be capable of taking care of them the way he could. Once, while Ianto was out, Owen spilt the special barbecue sauce that indicated what was food to Myfawny on a workstation and put off cleaning it up. Ianto had a sick pterodactyl and mess of broken computers to clean up the next day. Needless to say, it was more than a little hard to trust Owen's intuition on matters like these. He didn't have to, though. In the end, Jack made the decision.

Still, it didn't seem right to send them off without making it clear what was going to happen to them. After some deliberation, he invited a professor of Latin by the name of Dr. Grayson to the Hub, and requisitioned a healthy dose of RetCon.

* * *

For a man who spent the past forty years debating translations of Pliny the Elder, Dr. Grayson was a surprisingly accepting man. Perhaps, with all the sightings of aliens these days, Roman soldiers wandering about Cardiff was more like a quaint happenstance.

Ianto took him down the vaults, mentally saying hello to the newest arrival, Sporty. The Romans, unsurprisingly, were not happy and upon seeing Ianto made sure he knew that fact. Or, at least he assumed that's what they were doing, since they were beating on the glass and growling. It took Dr. Grayson some time to get used to the dialect, but they determined that the soldiers were from the 1st century CE. The only word Ianto could pick out was Agricola.

"They are almost believable." Dr. Grayson smiled. "I know my colleagues must have put you up to this and everything, but it's quite fun to go along with it."

Ianto had to revise his understanding of Dr. Grayson. Accepting? Yes. Just not of time traveling Romans.

By that time, Jack had pulled into the garage with a large, unmarked van. Why they didn't use it more often than the conspicuously modified SUV, Ianto really couldn't guess. Apparently, Owen felt the same way and remarked on it while Jack walked in.

"How often do we need to transport thirteen Roman soldiers?" returned Jack, shrugging his shoulders. "Besides, it's not very cool, is it? It's more fun racing through the streets in a vehicle you know is going to smash things up."

Owen didn't answer, but instead returned to almost gleefully sedating the soldiers while Jack helped by unceremoniously lugging them into their seats. Ianto followed and fussily buckled their seat belts, not so much for their safety, but his. Should they wake up, the seat belts could very well save his life.

"Why are we putting them to sleep?" asked Dr. Grayson warily as he watched Owen jab another soldier with a needle with a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

"This is the one that bloody stabbed me," Owen explained, catching Ianto's disapproving look.

"Don't really fancy explaining to thirteen battle-hardened men from another century what we're doing," responded Ianto.

"Come on, this is just a joke my colleagues are playing, isn't it? They're not actually Roman soldiers, are they?"

Ianto raised his eyebrows and handed the man a bottle of water laced with RetCon. "Yes, that would be unbelievable." Above them, Myfawmy screeched and flew across the Hub where she landed and began to stretch her wings out.

"Right," said the professor nervously, eying Myfawmy with undisguised anxiety. He nodded his thanks, and opened the bottle with a shaking hand. "I suppose those other prisoners, the ones you called the Spice Girls, weren't just wearing Halloween masks... Happens all the time, then, does it?"

"Not usually like this," is what Ianto almost said, but it seemed like to would invite the older man to ask more questions. Instead, he just said, "yes". After all, this stuff did sort of happen all the time. In fact… a thought occurred to him. "Did they say how they got here, the Romans?"

The professor looked away contemplatively in that way all old, learned men do when they are trying to recall something, which Ianto thought was simply a way to make dull things seem more interesting by forcing people to anticipate them. Then Ianto looked at the bottle of water he had handed the professor, and was forced to reappraise the situation. Apparently, the professor had been very thirsty. "I believe they mentioned something about the gods blowing them here on the winds."

"Did they see anything?" Ianto asked hurriedly as Dr. Grayson began to sway slightly. He didn't really like where his train of thought was leading him, but he followed it anyway.

"I don't really know. It's hard to understand them. Something about flashes of color…" His words were getting slower. "I would ask… but you've already knocked them out."

"Right. Well, then... Owen, mind taking him home?"

Dr. Grayson's eyelids fluttered slightly as he made a noise to protest.

Owen theatrically rubbed his bandaged arm. "I do a bit, yeah."

"I'll do it," said Jack, catching Dr. Grayson just as he was about to fall over. "Well, hello déjà vu. This reminds me of a few of my more regrettable evenings."

Ianto rolled his eyes.

* * *

Wales was cold, but Scotland was far worse. The Shetlands Islands… well, it didn't bear thinking about it, really. He was glad that Jack took Owen's stance, and let Torchwood Two finish the soldiers' journey. He didn't want to be away from Lisa that long, and he certainly didn't fancy trying to conceal thirteen clearly drugged Roman soldiers on the ferry.

The journey had been surreal, to the say the least. Ianto had felt like some bizarre caricature of a private taxi service as he drove up the M6 with thirteen overgrown men snoring in the back. _Torchwood_ _Taxi,_ Ianto laughed inwardly at the thought, _taking_ _aliens_ _and_ _temporally_ _displaced_ _peoples_ _where_ _they_ _need_ _to_ _go_ _since_ _1879_.

It was with great relief to be rid of them, even if what Dr. Grayson had said about their disappearance from their timeline worried him a bit, especially after reading the news report about Beth Ann. These thoughts plagued him as he drove back to Wales, and he wondered if it was worth telling Jack, but something in the way Jack had said Beth Ann's name made him hesitant.

* * *

When Ianto returned to the Hub he was surprised the lights were on, and that everyone was still there. They were shouting about something inane, and issuing challenges with drunken abandon. Quietly, Ianto sat down at a workstation and began filling out a report for his little Roman road trip. Petrol. Mileage. Meals. Retcon Administerings. Administrative work, as it always is, was a dull affair, and Ianto knew why the others were so loathe to do it they usually let it for him. He looked at the last box on the form labeled _Further_ _Incidents_ , and he left the cursor blinking there for a moment. The whole trip had been unexpectedly uneventful. It was odd, and Ianto wasn't quite sure how he felt about that. After some thought about the way things usually went with Torchwood, he decided he wasn't really going to complain about it.

A messenger window blinked on the bottom left hand side of his computer screen as he was filling in the forms. It was Suzie. He looked over to see her typing away at the small laptop she kept to analyse weapons' energy patterns. She must have sneaked away from the merry makers.

Suzie Costello was quiet. She always kept to herself, and Ianto rather liked that about her. She didn't try to engage in awkward conversations the way Tosh did, and she didn't make snide comments about his work like Owen did. More importantly, she didn't give him hungry looks that confused him like a certain Captain Jack Harkness did. He knew nothing about her, he realised, and that was exactly why he liked her.

Then she had to go and ruin it all by instant messaging him, begging him to go bowling instead of her so she could focus on some glove that had been dredged up from the river in the sixties. They needed four players, apparently. Naturally, it didn't occur to them that Ianto could be the fourth.

Of all the people at the Hub, he didn't want to lie to Suzie, the one he felt so close to if only because of great distance that laid between them. He apologised and begged off by tell her that that he was going to spend the night in with his girlfriend. He was almost proud of the excuse. There was a subtle truth in it, but it was still a deception nonetheless. It also made him feel like Lisa was still with him.

_When had he thought she wasn't?_

Instantly, he regretted it. It felt like he was pushing Suzie away, and giving up his game all at the same time. What if someone thought to check into this girlfriend and find he was lying, or worse, that he wasn't? The thought terrified him. He was going to have to concoct a break up story to avert suspicion.

That, of course, was easier said then done. Ianto had never broken up with anyone before. Even if it was fictional, he couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't absolutely shatter him. He told Lisa about his mistake, but she didn't seem to be able to hear him. She heard him less and less these days, spoke to him less and less. "Just a bit longer," he told her, "I've got a man interested. Thinks he can make you human. At the very least, he think he can get you off these machines."

He stayed for a few hours even though she didn't respond, and worked on his laptop, his mind reviewing Jack's tone of voice over and over again when he mentioned the missing girl. He couldn't get the way Jack said Beth Ann's name out of his head. On a whim, he typed it into the Torchwood database and found one old, incomplete file matching his rather vague search. Ianto sighed. Torchwood Three still had not gone completely digital, which meant that the file was hidden somewhere in the messy archives. More work to be done. Perfect.

It was as he found his eyes drooping that he realised he had a perfectly valid excuse, that he needn't have drug Lisa into it at all. He should have just said he was tired. Thirteen hours on the road would make anyone knackered, yet he had forgotten it because of his need to be with Lisa. Stifling a yawn, he bade Lisa good night, and made his way to the archives where he fell asleep with his face planted in the divide of a manila folder.


	3. Cause of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything Changes, and references to events that will happen in Cyberwoman.

Jack was the first to notice that something wasn't quite right with Ianto's face. In the reflection of a glass that surrounded Jack's office, Ianto saw that there was a long, red mark traversing the length of his face. _The_ _manila_ _folder_ , he shook his head. Tiredly, he rubbed his face and walked away as Jack's chuckle rumbled out of his office door. The rest of the Hub was quiet, and Ianto guessed it was because everyone was nursing massive hangovers from the night before. The notoriously dim lights had been dimmed even lower, and Ianto had trouble making his way to the coffee machine.

"How does he bloody do it?" groaned Owen. He was collapsed over the back of a desk chair, blearily watching Ianto making coffee.

"What?"

"Come to work as chipper as you like, as if last night never happened?"

"Perhaps we never give Americans enough credit for their drinking prowess," suggested Ianto, though he guessed it was because Jack didn't drink much last night, if at all. He rarely did.

"That is salt in the wound, mate." Owen's groaning had turned into more of a pitiable moan. "I've seen Americans. They drink one pint of lager and they're trollied."

Ianto rubbed his face again, feeling to see if the mark had gone, and then handed Owen a cup of coffee.

"Cheers." Owen stared at his cup with a look of intense concentration, as if he were weighing the pros and cons of drinking coffee after he had just spent ten minutes in the loo vomiting, something Ianto fervently prayed he wouldn't need to clean up after.

Ianto nodded, and loaded up his tray.

Tosh faired better than Owen, but her fingers were moving slowly, like an old lady in a typing class.

"Thanks, Ianto." She turned to look at him and gave him a wane smile. "Just what I needed."

Ianto nodded, and went to find Suzie who was slumped over her table. She seemed to be trying very hard to get herself to concentrate and failing miserably.

"You went out then, I take it?" Ianto asked, setting down her mug.

"No thanks to you," she said meekly.

"Sorry," Ianto apologised, though he was sure he didn't mean it. He was glad to be in his full faculties.

"Isn't that the same suit you wore yesterday?"

Ianto looked down. It was in fact the same suit, crumpled after a long road trip, and being slept in. He didn't fancy to know what he smelled like. "So it is."

"You dog, you." Suzie smiled, but her eyes went distant as she blew across the top of her coffee. It was only when Ianto left that he realised she was implying the only natural assumption one could make when someone supposedly spends the night with their girlfriend and shows up to work the next day in the same clothes. Ianto wasn't sure if he should have been embarrassed by that or not.

"Ianto! Where's my coffee?" Jack yelled from his office.

"Oi!" Owen complained, putting his hands up to his ears.

Grasping the empty tray, Ianto made his way up the landing. "Sorry, sir. Didn't make you any."

"Why the hell not?"

"Respect for the others." He left before Jack could protest, walking past Owen who lifted his mug in silent thank you.

* * *

The team was out again, and Ianto was grateful.

They had been out investigating common homicides with the Resurrection Gauntlet for weeks now. While he felt affairs like this were none of Torchwood's business, he knew it certainly wasn't any of his. Though, there was something about it all that made him rather uncomfortable. He tried to imagine dying, and then having to do it all over again, and he shuddered at the thought. There just was something not quite right about it. Still, he had no reason to complain. It gave him more time to focus on the Lisa problem, so he said nothing.

During the course of the week, Jack had become interested in a policewoman named Gwen Cooper, though Ianto couldn't figure out why. All she had done was witness Jack twice quite coincidentally. It wasn't like she had done anything exceptional in those two times, either. After all, Ianto took out a Weevil the first night he met Jack, and a pterodactyl on the third.

What had Jack's file on him said? _Able,_ he scoffed inwardly _,_ _but_ _not_ _exceptional_.

Ianto rolled his eyes, annoyed that his thoughts sounded far too much like jealousy to deny it. He was even more annoyed that Jack's new found interest meant that he would have to research her thoroughly: computer passwords, friend's addresses, eating habits, psychological profiles, the lot. And god forbid if the coffee didn't come on time, or if the latest Weevil victim's death didn't get a nice and tidy cover up.

He heard of a disgruntled growl from below him. _Oh,_ _right.v_ _And_ _feed_ _the_ _Weevils._ Myfanwy squawked. _And_ _Myfanwy._

It was amazing he found the time to even sit in the tourism office to keep up appearances when the aforementioned Gwen Cooper walked in. He didn't mind though. He rather liked working the tourist office, explaining over and over where Cardiff Castle was to the perpetually lost English tourists, and so help him, he liked seeing their chagrinned looks when they realised they weren't even on the right train line. His favorite of the day were the Texans asking where Roald Dahl Plass was, though it took him some time to decipher what "Ronald Dale Place" was. It was a bit of normal in a life that was patently not.

When she came in though, Ianto felt like he had instantly misjudged her. She was wary, and had no idea what she was getting herself into, yet she went down in the Hub without so much of a remark about the moving wall. Accepting is a good trait to have, he thought. He also liked hearing the sound of another Welsh accent. Directing foreign tourists, and being trapped in the Hub had made him nearly forget he lived in Wales at all, and it was pleasant to hear her voice. When he lived in London, he often used to feel the same way. Sometimes Lisa would fake a Welsh accent to comfort him, but it only made him laugh. She was horrid at it.

What Jack intended to do, he didn't know, but he had a guess. He'd take Gwen out for a drink, probably put on the moves, and then Retcon her. Although he couldn't prove it, Ianto wondered if this wasn't just a typical night out for the man. This meant that either he or Toshiko was going to have to remotely watch her apartment until she fell asleep. He didn't fancy the chances that it would be Tosh since she had been analysing a piece of alien tech for Jack.

Ianto didn't really have any scruples about spying, but it made him feel uncomfortable when he was forced to spy on a woman. He hoped that the RetCon would take effect quickly, before her boyfriend got home and had ideas.

Ianto went to the archives while he waited for the team to leave and started to enter the past vault prisoners into the database. The file for Beth Ann didn't have a last name, or a species listed, but it did report that she was forty years old at the date of her last appearance in 1999. Ianto frowned at the piece of paper. He had just created a whole lot of work for nothing. He didn't even know what he was expecting to find in the first place, unless…

His thoughts were cut off by the sound of the invisible lift. Gwen and Jack were gone.

He rushed to his desk and picked up his mobile.

"Dr. Tanizaki?" he asked.

* * *

Ianto should have known that Suzie was hiding something. She was far too like him to not be. What he didn't know was that she was hiding a far darker side, and he worried that it was something he shared.

Morbidly, Ianto watched the CCTV footage of the Plass, but the images were not very telling. It seemed that Jack had been shot, though it must have been only a graze since as he recovered from it so quickly. Then he saw Suzie standing in one image, and then flat on the ground the next. She had shot herself.

He was the one who filed the paper work when Jack put her into chryo-chamber, and he was the one who performed her final log out procedure. It was no surprise to him that she wasn't very much older than himself. Someday, he would be here in his own body bag, and he rather wondered if it wouldn't be because it would all drive him mad too. That he would take a gun to his head and let it all go.

_Cause of death: suicide._

Or worse, Torchwood would find out exactly why he had hiding in the basement.

 _Cause_ _of_ _death_ , he shuddered _,_ _Torchwood_.

He closed the door to her chamber, and returned to the Hub. Jack was in his office with Gwen, and Tosh and Owen were visibly shaken. Within days, it seemed as if Suzie had never even been there. Ianto wondered if the same thing wouldn't happen to him when his time came.


	4. Three Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Cyberwoman

Three deaths.

Near cataclysmic invasion of Earth by Cybermen.

Betrayed trust.

Destruction of irreplaceable equipment.

The list of Ianto's offenses seemed to go on. Alone, they warranted expulsion and sizeable dosage of RetCon. In Ianto's case though, a bullet to the head would be the safer bet. Together, though… his crimes warranted only four weeks of suspension. _That_ was his punishment for the unthinkable.

It tortured him, how light his sentence was. Maybe that was why Jack did it. There is no worse punishment for someone who wants it than to be denied it. The face of the pizza girl and the cyberneticist were both firmly planted in his brain. They wouldn't leave him. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he would see their bloodied bodies at his feet as he struggled through the wreckage of Torchwood One with Lisa crying in pain while he pulled her along.

Ianto let out a growl as he clenched his fist, and had to stop himself from pounding it into the wall. Four weeks of suspension? He deserved worse. Far worse. _But_ , his mind said, _you_ _didn_ _'_ _t_ _do_ _anything_ _wrong._ It sounded like Lisa's voice, and his, all at the same time. Lisa… _Just_ _how_ _long_ _should_ _I_ _have_ _been_ _mourning_ _you?_ _How_ _long_ _have_ _you_ _really_ _been_ _dead?_ He didn't know the answer, and it hurt all the worse to think he was tricked into believing she was still alive.

Then he thought about Tanizaki who he knew nothing about aside from the fact he was a gifted cyberneticist. He thought about the pizza girl who knew his name, though he never thought to return the favour. Was anyone mourning them at all yet? How long have they been dead to their families, if they were at all?

He got up from his sofa and changed from his rumpled suit into a pair of casual trousers. There were three people dead, he repeated in his mind as he knotted his blue tie, and the two he didn't know haunted him the most because he had nothing to say to these ghosts to make them go away

Then he left. Locked out of the Torchwood computer systems, he would have to do the legwork himself. He walked to Jubilee Pizza, but found that the employees had already been retconned. It made sense. The girl never returned from a delivery Torchwood and that was far too suspicious to let go until the morning. He wondered who got to them first, and how long after he left the smoking, disheveled mess of Torchwood behind. Knowing Jack, it was within an hour.

But Ianto knew how retconning worked. He knew he just had to ask questions differently.

"Do you have a blonde girl who works here? Usually keeps her hair in a braids?"

"Yeah. Must be Annie. She never showed up to work last night, did she?" the cashier leaned backwards to comment to the pizza maker in the rear.

"I don't even remember showing up to work last night," responded the pizza maker.

The two boys laughed. Had circumstances been different, Ianto might have joined in, but for other reasons.

"Annie Tait?" asked Ianto, using his favorite interrogation tactic. It was always amazing to him how much people like to correct others.

"No, Annie Botchwell."

"I guess it's the wrong girl then. Thanks anyway."

"It's alright, mate," he said. "Does this mean you're ordering pizza from somewhere else?"

"I don't think that thought has even occurred to us," lied Ianto. It occurred to him quite frequently, in fact.

"Guess not. It's been too long, eh? If you'd have gotten sick of us, it would have been a long time ago, like."

Ianto nodded quietly and left the pizza shop. Immediately, he felt like he was being watched. Typical. Typical bloody Torchwood. Typical bloody Britain with its CCTV. He looked directly at one of the cameras and gave it a challenging look before he walked away.

* * *

Even without Torchwood access, it was easy to find out about Annie Botchwell. Her facebook page was filled with photos of her drinking with friends, and her statuses usually talked about how she hated going to work. There were a few posts on her wall asking where she was since she never showed up to the clubs after work, and Ianto felt his gut twist. Torchwood was obviously hiding her body away to be found later- unless, they were waiting for him to get back to take care of it. He wouldn't put it past them.

Annie's mother didn't even know she was dead. Her mother didn't even know to mourn.

_How long should I have been mourning Lisa? How long has she actually been dead?_

He scanned the side of her page and saw that she had at least one brother. Again, he looked at her profile picture. She was smiling, and her hair was down and wavy. She looked nothing like the pizza girl in her party going clothes, with her face done up in dark mascara and glittering eye shadow.

"So this is how you grieve Lisa," said a voice that was American, undoubtedly sarcastic, and a bit full of itself. Ianto was not at all surprised by the visit.

Looking up from his laptop, he saw Jack Harkness standing at his threshold with his hands in the pockets of his great coat. Pointedly, Ianto returned his attention to his laptop.

"It's been a night," Jack said, closing the door behind him. "I guess it's time to move on. Makes sense."

Coldly, Ianto turned his head to look at Jack again. He wanted to feed all of his anger, and his hurt into one soul-destroying glare, but he was surprised to find that he felt nothing towards Jack. All the hatred he had felt the night before had dissipated. There was only emptiness, grief, and guilt.

"You don't talk much, do you Jones, Ianto Jones?"

"No."

"You did when we first met," Jack mused, a smile on his face. "When you talk, you do talk smoothly don't you? No one ever suspected a thing. I still don't know how you convinced me."

Ianto didn't respond. He knew exactly how he had done it.

"I still don't know why I want to keep you after this. Maybe it's because I know better than anyone that you are going to be a pain in the ass to Retcon. You're too careful, Ianto Jones. Maybe that's why I keep you around. But, boy, it really got away from you this time, didn't it?"

The silence in the room was heavy, and Ianto broke it by typing Annie's name into a search engine. The wonders of google.

"You really don't talk much, do you?" Jack said again. "And when you did, you lied to us."

"Of course I did," Ianto muttered coldly.

"Ah, good. Words. I like those. They make sentences, and honestly, sentences are what's going to keep your memory intact. You need to give me something, Ianto, or I'm going to have to consider other options."

Unbidden, the thought came. _Cause_ _of_ _death:_ _Torchwood._

Slowly, Ianto closed the lid of his laptop to give Jack his full attention.

"What do you want from me, sir? You can't tell me you wouldn't have done the same. I did what I did because I loved her. Because I believed I could save her."

"Geez, Ianto. I know that! I'm not stupid. But I don't really care about that, right now. It's done. Over. Finished. What I want to know is what are you doing now?"

"You know what I'm doing."

Jack leaned against the doorframe. "Yeah, I do. What I don't know is why."

"Does it bear asking?"

"It does. People accidentally get killed in this job. But... you've never looked them up before."

"I was never responsible before."

"Good. You know you're responsible."

Ianto glared at him, but Jack said nothing more. "I have three ghosts that haunt me," Ianto started, his voice menacingly low, "but Lisa's is not as terrible as Doctor Tanizaki's and Annie Botchwell's. I can still talk to Lisa in my mind. I know what she would say, and I can hear her argue with me for all eternity if I need it. But the other two, I know nothing about them, and that disturbs me. I can feel them mouthing words to me that I cannot understand, and I need to know who they are, and what I've done. I need to know what they are saying."

Jack sighed, and moved over to Ianto's grey sofa. He sat down on the arm, and Ianto eyed him and the armrest he was sitting on uneasily, preferring Jack sat like a normal human on a chair… and further away from him.

"Annie Botchwell. Just finished her A levels. Was doing a gap year so she could save up some money. Planned on going to Spain for a few weeks as a work study. Two brothers. One she doesn't get along with. One she is very close to. Mother is a housewife. Father is a hard ass. She liked pub quizzes, and her favorite show was X-Factor."

Ianto could almost hear him say "no big loss then" when he mentioned the television show.

"She was an able student," Jack continued, "but not exceptional."

Ianto flinched.

"She will be missed and loved by enough people that she doesn't need you added to the list."

"Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"Is this your attempt to make me feel better?"

"No. This is my attempt to stop you from knocking on family member's doors asking for forgiveness and making a general mess of things. You've already done enough of that."

"Good, because if this is a cheer up, you are rubbish at it."

"Don't go looking for them. You have four weeks to deal with this. If not, you better watch your back because I will get you if I have to put amnesia pills in every Starbucks in Cardiff."

"I guess I'll have to just go to Nero then, shall I?" Ianto said flatly.

Jack gave him a long look, his mouth teetering between a smile and a frown. In the end, he snorted and his lips quirked upwards. "Nero, Costa, even Greggs if I have to. We are going to have a city full of confused coffee drinkers just to get to you, Ianto Jones."

If Ianto had felt even a fraction like his old self, he would have considered that a compliment.

When Jack left, Ianto suddenly felt empty. He spent so little time in his flat that it didn't feel like home. When Lisa was alive- or rather, when he thought she was alive- he would often sleep in the Hub and pretend like he was just coming in early the next morning. No one seemed to catch on that he was there early and stayed late because he never left. No one ever noticed Ianto Jones.

Except Lisa.

Even Jack dismissed him, not only the first time he met him, but the second and third. _Not_ _like_ _Gwen_ _at_ _all_ , he felt the familiar twinge of jealousy. Gwen, Jack had immediately liked. Ianto… on the other hand… he had threatened to run over. He fell asleep, trying to silence his grief with Torchwood because they were the only thoughts he had. It took a long time, but sleep finally took him.

* * *

Days passed, though he couldn't say for sure how many, when he suddenly felt it necessary to check his post.

He didn't know why he always checked it. He never got anything aside from vouchers and advertisements. There was nothing else to get. His sister didn't know his address, and she wouldn't write him if she did. Not since their dad died, and most certainly not since her wedding to Johnny. Apparently, insinuating that the best man was a chav was not the best way to ingratiate himself to his sister, or her new family. Johnny, to his one and only credit, didn't really seem to mind one way or another.

As he rifled through his post, he set aside the Tesco vouchers to look through later. It was always good to stock up on things at Torchwood, and if it could be done cheaply, all the better.

Torchwood.

Ianto frowned. Clearly, he was having as much trouble getting over Torchwood as he was Lisa. It was like every part of him ached with loss, and for different reasons.

At the bottom of the stack was a letter addressed to I. Jones. He set it down on his coffee table, and disappeared into his room to find a handheld scanner he had from his Torchwood One days. It wasn't perfect, but it would do. He scanned the envelope, but found nothing odd or suspicious about it (aside from the fact that it was addressed to him and not to the "The Occupier"). Cautiously, he opened it, and removed a sheet of ordinary notebook paper with light blue lines. The writing was messy, and barely legible in places, so much so that Ianto struggled to read it.

_Ianto-_

_Do_ _you_ _ever_ _wonder_ _how_ _it_ _is_ _the_ _world_ _keeps_ _turning?_ _That_ _the_ _days_ _just_ _keep_ _on_ _coming?_ _Why_ _didn_ _'_ _t_ _time_ _just_ _stop_ _that_ _day?_

_I've thought about it. It should have ended. Us being alive… it's a mistake. Twenty-seven mistakes._

Ianto swallowed.

 _Us_ _being_ _alive_ _…_ he read again, _it_ _'_ _s_ _a_ _mistake._ _Twenty-seven_ _mistakes._


	5. Twenty-Seven Mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Cyberwoman

The letter wasn't signed, but he didn't think it would be terribly hard to figure it out, with or without Torchwood access. He knew the twenty-seven names by heart. He wrote them on a piece of paper, and paused on Iwan Evans-Nash's name. It was the only name he knew- had known- before Canary Wharf. A mousy man with hideously yellow hair, he worked in the artefacts department, and it was very obvious that he was madly in love with Lisa. Naturally, Ianto did not like him very much. Lisa had started a trend for liking pale, Welsh boys by dating Ianto, and Ianto very much needed that trend to stop with him.

"It's sweet that you would be jealous over him, but seriously, couldn't you choose someone a bit more glamourous than Iwan?" Lisa would tease him. "Don't you think I could be whisked away by Ioan Gruffudd?"

"He's married."

"So?"

He took out his laptop and entered the names in. After an hour, he had crossed off eleven names, and his pen shook in his hand as he put a line through the last name. Then, it hovered uncertainly over his own. He didn't even know why he had done this. He knew that it was from Iwan. There was no one else it could be. But he had to see the names again. He had to know.

Expertly, he took the code from the sorting office on the envelope, and traced it back to its likely origin.

Eleven names he had to cross off. Ianto hoped he would not be too late.

* * *

Radyr didn't exactly seem like an area Torchwood should be associated with, what with its neatly squared gardens and perfectly kept homes. There didn't seem to be anything more malicious there than a distraught housewife who thought her husband was carrying out an affair. He brought up the collar of his wool coat as he stepped off the train into the chill of the Radyr evening. It had taken him longer than he had hoped to divine the address Iwan had sent the letter from, and he walked fast to get there before it became dark. There was nothing scarier, he realized as he walked, than the dead streets of a suburban commuter town. For some reason wandering the sewers looking for Weevils paled in comparison. Maybe it was because the sewers didn't try to maintain a façade of innocence. You knew that someone was likely to attack you down there. It didn't find the need to pretend.

The houses on the road where Iwan lived all looked the same as one another, all done in a brown brick with white accents. He wondered if this was where normal people lived, undisturbed by the cold emptiness of an anonymous city flat or the hopelessness of the council estates.

He found the house with little effort, and walked up the pavement with some trepidation. Steeling himself, he knocked on the door.

"Iwan?" he called when the door didn't open. "Iwan?"

He knocked again and shoved his hands into his pocket. After a few minutes, he stepped off the front stair and circled the house. As he skirted around the perimeter, checking inside the windows to find no one, he heard rustling sounds in the garden followed by soft, indistinct mumbling. He instinctively reached for his taser as he cautiously eyed around the corner of the house.

There, in the middle of the garden, was Iwan, his straw-colored hair dirty and disheveled, and his dark eyes barely visible in the shadowy circles that surrounded them.

"Iwan?" Ianto called again, stepping from around the corner.

"Ianto?" Iwan looked up at him. He didn't seem surprised. "Didn't think you would find me."

Carefully, Ianto approached him. "Wasn't exactly the clearest invite."

"I should've known you'd figure it out. Should have known you'd find me." Iwan smiled and sat down on the grass. Ianto noted he had a portable Rift Activity Locator in his hands and it was beeping.

He was Torchwood One. Of course he had a quality kit.

"Iwan. Did you send letters to the others, too?" Ianto asked, his voice low.

"Yes."

"Did they respond?" Torchwood One training would make it easy for anyone to source the letter.

"Not all of them."

"Who didn't?" It was a difficult question, and Ianto felt his heart fell into his stomach as he asked it.

"Mary, from accounts. She wasn't even supposed to be there that day, you know…" His voice trailed off, as if he were thinking it didn't matter whether or not you were at work that day. Mary Oxton. Ianto remembered putting a line through her name. "Then there was Ryan from security."

Ryan Fitzgibbon. He was the first name Ianto had crossed off the list. First man on the front lines… the carnage he must have seen… It must have been horrifying.

"Topped themselves, I guess." Iwan said sadly. "Good thing too. How could we live in this world after what happened? How could we survive _that_? There's only sixteen of us now. Soon to be fifteen." He eyed Ianto. "Maybe fourteen."

Bile rose in Ianto's throat as he realized what the letter meant now.

"Why did you send the letters?" asked Ianto.

"I wanted to help. Make it easier. Know that you're not alone."

Ianto swallowed, took his hand off his taser and approached the man. He struggled for words. Part of him knew that Iwan was right. Time did stop for Ianto the day the Cybermen came. He spent two years holding onto a fantasy that Lisa was still alive, and he still worked for Torchwood. He had stopped time to right before the attack, and it now seemed that it was starting to catch up with him.

"It doesn't have to be like this," he said finally, his voice quiet. "I can Retcon you."

"And pretend like it never happened? All those deaths… they would be meaningless. And what would happen if I went searching for Lisa. It would all come back. I know me. I'd look for her."

Ianto felt numb. "I can go further back."

"And put me in the vaults. I'd have to lose four years of my life. It would drive me mad wondering where those years went. You wouldn't be able to assimilate me, and you'd stick me down with the Weevils. Perlman retconned himself. Sectioned him not long after. Death is better. Must of thought the same, Perlman. Eventually found a high window to jump through."

Ianto remember crossing Matt Perlman's name, too, right after Mary's. Just then the Rift Monitor started to beep more erratically.

"You see, I've thought about it." There was a quality in Iwan's voice that Ianto didn't like. It sounded like his mother's when she was feeling off.

"Ianto." The voice wasn't Iwan's. "Step away from him."

Ianto turned around to see Jack, his Webley pointed at one of them, but which one Ianto wasn't sure. "I thought I said you were suspended. You'll be more than that if you don't back away."

It was almost unconscious how he listened to the command in Jack's voice. Jack checked his wristband quickly as Ianto stepped backwards, his gun still pointed at Iwan.

"Ianto." Iwan said, standing up. "Don't let me go alone. This started with time and space. Let's end it that way. We need to fix the mistake."

Ianto stopped backing away. On the screen in Iwan's hands, he could see the rift indicator slowly beginning to dip beneath the x-axis.

"Ianto!" Jack shouted, lunging forward to grab his arm and yanking him backwards. There was a rush of air, and Ianto heard the distinctive noise that accompanied the rift as a rush of purples, reds and blues danced across his eyes.

And then, Iwan wasn't there anymore. Everything seemed to be as it was, even a small indentation of where Iwan had sat in the grass.

Ianto struggled to stand up, but he couldn't do it fast enough. He found himself crawling to the spot Iwan had been. "There are only fifteen now," he whispered. "Just fifteen."

"I'm sorry." Jack had come up behind him and put his hand on his shoulder.

"If believed you were, I would accept it."

Jack said nothing.

"Do you remember," Ianto said quietly, blinking back tears, "what you said to me about Canary Wharf?"

"No." Jack was lying, Ianto was sure of it.

"You said that it wasn't your responsibility. If that really were the case, why do you run down aliens and save people you've never met? None of them are your responsibility." Jack said he didn't talk much, and Ianto seemed set to prove him wrong. "You said that you didn't care that I had those memories. Who was I to talk to then? You said that I hid myself from you. I had to. You gave me no other choice. This makes you more responsible for what happened than you'll ever know."

Jack still said nothing.

"There are only fifteen of us, sir. What are we supposed to do? We were not mistakes! We weren't! How can there only be fifteen of us? And tomorrow, what will we be? Fourteen? What will happen when I'm the last, and I have to bear eight hundred and forty-nine deaths that should have never happened?"

Ianto heard a deep inhalation of breath behind him as Jack sank down to his knees and put his arm around Ianto's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Jack said simply. Ianto stared at the space his old friend once occupied, his mind ignoring the curious questions Iwan's sudden and inexplicable disappearance forced him to ask in favour of grieving everything that he used to be.


	6. More Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Small reference to Small Worlds.

Ianto had seen enough of the resurrection glove in action to know that death was not something to simply wish for the way Iwan did. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, when you died. Though, for Ianto, that particular revelation was all that bad. If he hadn't already had been an atheist, he would have had to deal with a substantial crisis in faith after hearing what the resurrected had said on top of all his other issues. There was that at least.

The problem was, however, that he felt like nothing. Absolutely nothing. Death didn't really seem to matter much to him. Either way, he would feel the same. The void that Lisa,-no- that Torchwood One, had left threatened to swallow him whole and he had to fill it with something, or he might as well be dead.

So it was that, after his suspension, he went to work early in the morning, and left late at night. Sometimes, he would sleep in the archives, and secretly change clothing in the morning like he did when Lisa was there. Other times, he didn't sleep at all. Instead, he stared at the strange negative spikes on the rift monitors, trying to convince himself not to investigate it. That it wasn't important. That nothing was.

Tosh was the first to speak with him. He knew she would be. She would say good morning, and good night, which was nothing unusual, but now she asked about his day and sometimes brought him coffee. He desperately wanted to yell, "I'm not okay!" at the top of his lungs, and crash the massive computer displays onto the ground. He wanted to torch Torchwood, and let the flames consume him.

"Good morning, Ianto," Tosh said sweetly as she walked into the tourist information booth. "How are you?"

"I'm alright," he responded, keeping his voice even. "About to make a cuppa. Would you care for one?"

She looked uncertain, but nodded. Ianto could tell she was trying to make a respectful distance a little bit less distant. She wanted to be his friend. Ianto wasn't sure if that was a good idea.

But what was worse than Tosh's deference, Owen's indifference, and Gwen's ambivalence, was Jack's eyes. He could feel them on him wherever he went, and he couldn't quite bring himself to meet them.

It seemed to Ianto that it was as if he was repeating his past life all over again. Working all the time. Avoiding his teammates. It was as if his life kept stopping at certain points, and he would labour on in indefinite time loops until someone forced him to move on.

He concentrated on the computer screen ahead of him. He needed something to distract him from it all, and the tiny insignificant negative spikes he would occasionally find in the records were doing the trick. He hadn't even noticed how late it had gotten.

The questions plagued him, though. What happened to Iwan? And how did Jack know it would? Did he know at all? Had he just been following Ianto when it all happened?

But the way he had said "Beth Ann" all those months ago still stuck with him. Jack knew something, and he was hiding it.

Distractedly, he went through the field reports file in order to figure out just what Jack was doing in Radyr.

"You shouldn't be here." He heard Jack's voice say behind him. Ianto turned to look at him, trying to steady his heartbeat. He noted as he closed the file that there was no report of Jack leaving the Hub on the day of Iwan's disappearance.

"Neither should you," he said quickly, moving to the monitor to change the screen as he sat down. _It_ _'_ _s_ _not_ _that_ _odd,_ his mind reasoned with him, _it_ _wouldn_ _'_ _t_ _be_ _the_ _first_ _time_ _Jack_ _failed_ _to_ _fill_ _out_ _his_ _paperwork._

Jack patted him on the shoulder. "What you got?"

Ianto looked at him nervously, the same thought that had been haunting him for weeks making itself known again. Are things okay again? Were they ever?

But there he was, still in Torchwood, with his memories intact. It seemed silly to wonder at the rift that lay between them when Jack's hand was on his shoulder, making the gap nonexistent.

"Funny sort of weather patterns," Ianto said, returning his attention to the screen.

Jack's hand lingered on his back as he went silent, and then he walked away.

_More_ _secrets_ , thought Ianto. When he heard Jack walk away, he began to chart the negative spikes again. _More_ _secrets_.

On gut instinct, he started looking for missing people's reports. Few coincided with the negative spikes, but it was something. It wasn't strong enough to be a positive correlation, but his gut was telling him what parts of him wasn't willing to accept. _The_ _rift_ _giveth_ , he thought, _and_ _the_ _rift_ _taketh_ _away_.

Ianto stared at the screen, his mind stuck. _What_ _had_ _happened_ _to_ _Iwan?_

* * *

"Where are you going, Ianto?" Jack called from the landing. "You're not going to deprive the office of your dress sense, are you? Who will we look up to?"

Ianto looked up, his mind traveling along three simultaneous tracks. First, he noted that Jack felt it was acceptable to flirt with him again. Second, he inwardly concurred that he really was the best dressed, though that didn't mean much in a office populated by Owen, and Tosh. He reckoned he beat out Gwen, and it didn't seem fair to count Jack when his fashion harkened from a different era. Third, he bizarrely thought of Gwen's hair, which was nice, but surely got in the way while she was chasing aliens. Why didn't she wear it back like she did when she was in the police?

"I'll be back, sir. I think I need a day off from making coffee. Care for anything from Nero?"

He saw Jack laugh at the mention of Nero, and his insides warmed. Things, it seemed, were getting better.

"I'm fine. Keep your comm on in case of rift activity."

Ianto didn't need to be reminded, but he could sense Jack was trying his best with what few words he could use to make him feel included.

But Ianto did not go to Nero. He found himself in Radyr again, staring at Iwan's house. He was barely conscious when Jack dragged him away from the house. He didn't even remember how he got home. It certainly wasn't by train, he realized, because he still had the return ticket.

He knocked on the door, and waited for a reply. He didn't know who he was expecting to answer, but he did it anyway, more out of ingrained politesse than anything else. After a few minutes, he clumsily picked the lock the way Owen had taught him and walked inside.

Iwan's house was empty for the most part. The first door on the left had a couch and a television, but not much else. He went to the next room, which was completely empty aside from a few boxes filled with history books. Iwan, he remembered, loved ancient civilizations. The kitchen had only the most basic supplies, and was tight to move around in. An acrid smell drifted from the refrigerator which he assumed was rotting food. Instantly, he regretted opening it make sure it wasn't body parts, or whatever weird things people in his line of work stored in their refrigerator. The stench from the decaying vegetables and meat hit him like a car. Coughing, and still waving his hand in front of his nose, he went up to stairs only to find a bathroom with only one bar of soap and half-used roll of loo paper, and another empty room. There was one room at the end of the hallway, and Ianto couldn't help but notice that the door knob had suffered some serious trauma. The wood around it was splintered, and cracked.

Cautiously, he pulled out his gun and pushed the door open. The place had been ransacked. The mattress and the duvet were torn up, and the desks were overturned. Whatever Iwan had in there, it was evident that someone didn't want it found.

_Didn_ _'_ _t_ _want_ me _to_ _find_ _anything,_ thought Ianto at first, but then he dismissed it as paranoia.

* * *

"I assume you went Iwan's house," Ianto said, placing a cup of coffee on Jack's desk. "It's been thoroughly worked over."

Jack gave him a long look, the kind he was giving to Ianto more and more these days. It was more unnerving than the sexually charged leers he usually directed at him. The first he understood, could handle. The second scared him because he didn't know what they meant. Finally, Jack raised his eyebrows and answered. "Of course I did. Former Torchwood. Alien technology. Can't let that fall into the wrong hands. Couldn't ask you to do it, seeing as you were suspended." Jack's mouth went rigid, and Ianto fancied it was because he was keeping other, unspoken, reasons behind his lips.

"Right."

"Why were you there? Thought you were going to Nero."

Jack was covering up something he didn't want know, Ianto could feel it. "Best Nero is on the High Street in Radyr," lied Ianto, not caring it was completely unconvincing. He didn't even go down the High Street to know if there was a Nero. "Just wanted to make sure myself while I was there. Seems I didn't have to," Ianto responded.

There was a silence as the two looked at one another, each searching for something the other wasn't sure of. Finally, Jack broke the tension. "You okay, Ianto?"

"As well as can be imagined, sir."

"So, not great." Jack leaned across his desk and grabbed Ianto's hand. "You have to know what Iwan said was wrong."

"It wasn't," said Ianto quietly, feeling Jack's eyes on him quite keenly. "He wasn't wrong, sir. Time should have stopped for Lisa then. She was a mistake."

"But…" Jack squeezed his hand. "You're not."

How could Jack spout such corny lines with impunity? Ianto supposed that it must be what comes with being the hero.

The human contact surprised him. How long had it been since he was touched? Days, and before that, years. His breath caught in his throat, and he snatched his hand away. He nodded softly, and left the office.

He could feel his hand tingling, as he went through the artefact requisition files. This happened every time Jack touched him. There was such a thrill to it. What was Jack's ridiculous reason for it? 51st century pheromones, he had said. Jack was always full of stories, all them told so convincingly that Ianto could feel himself almost believing them. But with the fading memory Lisa, his guilt in enjoying Jack's flirtations faded as well. Of course, he immediately felt guilty for not feeling guilty, and his ambivalence on the matter distracted him as clicked meanderingly through the files. With some effort, he forced himself to concentrate. Iwan's house had nothing but rift monitoring equipment, and all of it was redundant.

Jack wouldn't hide equipment, would he?

Of course he would. His office was full of uncatalogued objects, locked desk drawers, and everything and anything that made the more curious' fingers itch to find out what secrets lurked within. Secrets they may be, but their presence was not well hidden. It was a testament to Jack's sheer force of personality that no one would meddle with the mysteries of his office.

Still, he couldn't well leave this alone. He had to know what happened to Iwan, and he knew instinctively that asking Jack was not the right idea.

It was obvious that the Romans, Beth Ann, and Iwan were connected to the Rift. Evidently the rift didn't just deposit other creatures from space and time, it also took them away. But there was no one to ask. Beth Ann and Iwan were gone, and the Romans were in the Shetlands, no doubt cursing his very existence, or worse, doing exactly as Jack fantasised.

But something told him not to discount the name he had found in the old vault files. It was possible that rift returned victims, wasn't it? What if they didn't return them to the right time? That the Beth Ann of the vaults was the same as the little girl who disappeared at the park, returned to an earlier timeline?

The whole idea made Ianto's head hurt. It surely couldn't be right. And if he was right, why would Jack hide it at all?


	7. Suicide by Torchwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some reference to Countrycide.

Though his search on Beth Ann had ultimately been a bust, Ianto found that he couldn't just leave the rest of the files be. At some point he was going to have digitalise them. Why not do it while Jack and his merry men chased fairies about? It wasn't as if he had much else to do aside from watch the Weather Channel, anyway.

The amount of Weevils that had come through the Rift amazed him, though he was pleasantly surprised to find that someone else had the same sense of humour as he did. Harpo. Groucho. Zeppo. Chico. He didn't like those as much as the ones where they were named after philosophers. Aristotle, Nietzche, and Kant all had a nice ironic ring to them. He did not care, however, looking over the documents for the early 1900s. Very little was recorded, but from what he could tell, Torchwood had a nasty habit of executing the aliens in their vaults in quick order.

It took weeks of sifting through files, in what little time he had away from his regular duties, where he watched the team fall apart and then back together again.

It was the completely ordinary human name that caught his eye, though, late night when the team had gone out drinking. Thomas Jarvis. He couldn't imagine having the last name Jarvis, and think it was a good idea to name a son Thomas, but there it was, in all its grating sibilance.

His species wasn't entered, but an age and place of discovery was. It was just like Beth Ann's profile. Quickly, he checked the last date. 2000 disappearance. The same day as Beth Ann.

"Ianto!" It was Jack's voice in his comm. "Meeting in five."

Ianto scribbled the name down, and decided to look into it later. When he got to the office, Jack was grinning. "Saddle up boys and girls, we're going on a road trip!"

* * *

It was becoming increasingly clear to Ianto, as he sat on the boot of the SUV, with his head throbbing with a concussion, and his body "tenderised" by a baseball bat, that he was having a rather rough time of it these days. If there was a god, he decided, it was a massive sadist and a bit too in love him. The endless stream of shit that came his way was just that, endless, and he wondered how long he would cope.

To top it off, he was still legitimately worried about getting Hepatitis from that cheeseburger he ate. Of all the things to worry about after escaping certain death at the hands of cannibals. _Right,_ _Jones._ _You_ _'_ _ve_ _definitely_ _got_ _your_ _priorities_ _straight._

Jack took him home, or so he thought. It was hard to say. His thoughts were so jumbled, he couldn't keep track of them.

Meat.

Run. Tosh, please run.

Owen. Gwen. Shag.

Tosh. Run. Run. Please run.

Meat.

Twenty-seven.

Jack. Jack knows.

Where is Jack?

Thread by thread, he unraveled them and when his mind began to falter there was a gentle hand on his shoulder shaking him awake.

Twenty-seven mistakes.

Meat.

Jack.

* * *

There was one good thing, Ianto found, about being massively abused on one of the few field missions he got and it was that it essentially precluded him from participating in any in the near future. Every part of Ianto ached, and he had to favour his right leg when he walked. Even breathing hurt, but he worked. There was nothing else he could do, aside from relive the memories, or throw out every piece of meat in his refrigerator. The latter of the two he had already done the moment he was conscious, so Ianto worked to avoid doing the former, taking advantage of being benched so he could continue his research on Thomas Jarvis.

His preliminary search brought up nothing but a short Wikipedia page saying that he was the assistant governor of North Carolina. _Definitely_ _not_ _him, then_. He searched missing persons reports and found nothing.

So Ianto dug back further, using Tosh's increasingly exhaustive database search procedures that still confused him when she tried to explain how it worked. He knew it had to do something with a book scanner she had picked up, and having it integrated into library security cameras. After that, as it was wont to happen, he got a little bit lost.

He mused a bit on Tosh as the computer searched the massive amount of data, and realised that for all he appreciated Suzie, it should have been Tosh he felt close to. She, too, was private, but at least she had a heart, something made clear when she would occasionally buy him a coffee (which never tasted very good) or ask him how his days went. It didn't surprise him that he had chosen to give his life for hers. It only surprised him that he was still alive. Just as the terrible memories returned, the computer displayed a database find:

_Thomas Jarvis of Yorkshire , age fifty-six was last seen hiking in Brecon Beacons. He was expected back late on Saturday night. Thomas Jarvis is of medium height, brown hair, and was last seen wearing a yellow windcheater. If you have any information, please contact…_

Ianto shuddered at the name Brecon Beacons. It was going to be a long time before he would return there, if ever. It would be a long time, in fact, before he would do a lot of things, least of which was eat meat, breathe without inducing a searing pain in his ribs, or feel safe around other people.

But then again, that last one was nothing new.

The case of Thomas Jarvis convinced him of what he already knew. The only problem was, what was he supposed to do with this information? If Jack was covering it up, he very well wasn't going to admit it. Worse yet, what if this was the last nail in the Ianto's Torchwood coffin? What if he overstepped his bounds, and moved into the realm of immediate removal?

_Cause of death: Suicide by Torchwood._

Putting his elbows on the desk, and folding his hands, Ianto leaned his forehead against them and considered his options.

It seemed they both had their secrets.

* * *

The Hub was dark, and quiet, the way Ianto liked it. He had come to think of it as his home, more than his workplace, and he enjoyed the peace quiet of having it to himself at the end of the day, even with Jack there. After he cleaned what he liked to call the butler's pantry, and put away the coffee mugs, he made his way up to the lone light in Jack's office.

"Ah, Ianto. Late night?" Jack set down his papers and directed his most winning gaze at him. "How are you holding up?"

Ianto still very much tender from the incident with the cannibals, flexed his shoulder to confirm the answer he was about to give.

"Better. Not perfect. I'm a whole array of colors I never though existed, sir, and none of them are particularly attractive." It was true. His chest was a mass of yellows that gradated into purples, and none of them matched any of his shirts, least of all his red ones. He had always looked good in red, too.

"I can imagine," said Jack, eying him up and down.

Steeling himself, Ianto grabbed the bottle of bourbon on Jack's desk and began to pour a glass. "Sir, you need me," Ianto stated matter-of-factly, setting the glass down next to Jack's hand, and then proceeded to pour himself one. "You've been sloppy."

"Oh?" Jack smiled, like he was playing a game, and Ianto tried not to blush over his very poor choice of words. "About what?"

"Beth Ann Taylor. Thomas Jarvis. Iwan Evans-Nash. Sir, I know that you know what the negative rift spikes mean."

The room went silent, and it suddenly felt unbearably glacial. It was always amazing to Ianto how Jack could change the temperature of a room with a simple mood swing.

"How do you know?" The look Jack gave him made his insides twist. It was deep, penetrating, and lacking in humour. He had only saw that once, and that was when Jack was deciding whether Ianto should live or die.

Ianto took another swig of his drink, and avoided looking at Jack directly. "You all but told me, sir."

Jack said nothing. Instead, he picked up his glass and spun the liquid around in it before tilting his head back to swallow it.

"You can't Retcon me, sir," Ianto ventured. What had Jack said he'd be? _A_ _pain_ _in_ _the_ _ass_ _to_ _Retcon_. Damn right he would be. "I make the coffees, and I deliver the food. You'd have to tackle me, and shove it in my mouth, and don't you dare make a sexual innuendo."

"Wasn't going to. That's a little bit too rapey for me, but if that's what you like..." Jack raised his eyebrows suggestively, and smirked devilishly.

Ianto chuckled into his glass, and took another sip. "You need me, sir."

"Do I?" his voice was cold again.

Ianto poured him another glass. "I can tell you if this is right, or if this wrong. And if this does need covering up, you haven't been doing a great job so far."

"This is really none of your business, Ianto." The glass at Jack's hand remained untouched. "This is a Torchwood affair, and dealt with at my discretion."

"Discretion, indeed, sir. You're very good at this discretion thing, are you?" Just how many times, Ianto reflected, had a mysterious man on the roof of the Millennium Center been reported on the news? Jack was even starting to attract a cult following.

"I'm telling you now, Ianto, don't push it."

"I need to know what happened to Iwan," Ianto said quietly. "I know he's connected."

"And you need to know that there are some things better left unknown." Jack had flattened his hand and hit it against his desk with each syllable of the last three words. Ianto blanched slightly, knowing full well that this is what Jack did when he was serious, and when Jack was serious… Ianto threw back the rest of his drink, and focused on the warm sensation that slid down his throat.

"Sir, what are you hiding?" he finally asked.

"Nothing as bad as a cyberwoman."

Ianto's stomach knotted as he stared at his glass. The discussion was over, and Ianto knew there was nothing he could do about it. "Right," said Ianto. He moved to pick up Jack's glass, intending to wash them, but Jack stopped him, his hand grasping Ianto's wrist.

"Leave it. I'll finish it."

Ianto didn't dare look up. He felt the familiar burning sensation he always felt when Jack directed his icy, blue eyes in his direction, and he couldn't bear to confront them. Nodding, he left the office, his resolve doing the exact opposite of what Jack wanted.


	8. Never Say Anything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Greeks Bearing Gifts

It was becoming very clear that Ianto wasn't the only one capable of betraying Torchwood in the name of love as he sat with Tosh in the boardroom doing the debriefing.

The isolation she had been feeling was something that Ianto could well understand, and her reasoning for allowing Mary into her life completely blameless even if completely stupid. Lisa had always said he was a romantic, though.

Jack just said he was efficient.

How little that man knew.

He wondered if he looked so small when he was debriefed after Lisa's death, but he couldn't remember it happening. Perhaps, without him to do it, it simply never crossed the team's minds. He couldn't very well interrogate himself, could he?

"I'm sorry, Ianto," Tosh said at the end. "I know I shouldn't have done it."

Ianto didn't answer. He knew that he should have been angry, but he wasn't. He played with his pen for a moment, and kept his gaze low. "Did you read my thoughts, then?"

Tosh looked away. In her lap, her fingers clenched at her skirt.

"That bad, was it?" Ianto smiled at her.

"Don't do that."

"Don't do what?"

"Smile when you don't mean it." Tosh closed her eyes. "Like you did when you head-butted that monster."

Ianto inhaled a long, deep breath. "You may have caught me at a bad time, Tosh."

"You said you hurt, that you always hurt." The words came out uncertainly, and she kept her eyes downcast.

"Of course I do." He almost added that that was what happened one was repeatedly beat by a baseball bat, but it felt too insincere. The truth was, he always hurt because of what happened at Canary Wharf, because of Lisa's death, because he didn't know where stood with Jack. Through it all, he had the unpleasant notion planted in his head that he could die at any moment, and he wasn't quite ready to deal with that revelation. Office boys weren't supposed to deal with that thought.

"But you never say anything."

"Do you?"

Tosh nodded, slowly at first. "You're right."

"Jack wants to talk to you before you go home."

"I'm not sure if I want to go home."

Ianto inclined his head knowingly.

"But I don't want to be here either," she added.

He understood that feeling too. But Jack would forgive, and wait as long as she needed to welcome her back into the fold. Ianto knew that better than anyone. But it would leave a dark mark on her service record, and that she would never be able to forget. But then again…

After Tosh left, Ianto went down into the archives and checked the records after searching the computer databases. The events of the cyberwoman were curiously missing.

* * *

It was hard not to notice Tosh's restlessness after the events of Mary, and Ianto wasn't sure if it was a good idea to give a cup of coffee to someone who couldn't sit still. In the end, he decided she rather have the excuse for company than to be left to her own manic devices.

"Thanks, Ianto," she said as he set down the mug.

"Any rift activity?" Leaning against her desk, Ianto looked at the computer screens. There was a mess of different windows up. Artefact databases. Translations. Rift monitoring. It was as if she couldn't decide on what would best distract her. It made sense. After all, why was he digitalising old archive records and looking for ghosts in the negative rift spikes on top of his other duties? It was all a distraction from the horror of reality.

"Wish there was," she replied listlessly.

"Care to make some up?" He felt a genuine smile tug on his lips, and he reveled in the feeling.

Tosh regarded him curiously. "How do you mean?"

Ianto's smiled widened, and he dangled the set of SUV keys in front of her. "You can drive."

* * *

Tosh wasn't smiling, Ianto noted, but she wasn't doing the opposite either, and that was something. She seemed calmer, now, as they cruised the Cardiff streets, a slightly more confident, something he assumed from the way she sat in the car, alert but relaxed.

"I never get to drive," she remarked.

"I know," responded Ianto. "I'll be sure to move everything back when we return so Owen won't complain."

"You know where the seat belongs?"

"I've got a good eye."

Then Tosh smiled as she turned to look at him, and her eyes lingered on his suit jacket before returning to the road. "You really do."

"Ianto?" Jack's voice came through the comm. "Care to tell me where the SUV is?"

"Sorry, sir. Minor rift activity. Tosh and I are checking it out."

"Funny, because I don't recall giving that order."

Ianto paused to consider his options before he spoke. "Taking initiative, sir."

"I usually like that," Ianto could almost hear him mentally add "in bed" to the end of that sentence, "but not when it involves my car."

"Our car," corrected Ianto playfully.

"My car," insisted Jack.

"We'll return it soon."

"No joyriding," joked Jack. "And come back if something big happens."

"He sounds like a dad," Tosh said when Jack's line cut. "I wonder if we aren't like his children… that's why no matter how angry he gets with us, he never stays that way."

Ianto considered it, but found the thought disturbing. The last thing he wanted was Jack to be father figure, especially when the man flirted with him so outrageously. It was more like a husb… "Perhaps," was all Ianto could manage to say before the Portable Rift Activity Locator beeped.

"What was that?" Tosh asked.

Ianto looked at the screen. It was a minor blip, and Ianto guessed they had only picked it up because of proximity. Had they been anywhere else, the alarm would not have sounded. "Something minor. Let's check it out though, just so we aren't actually lying about why we're out here."

Tosh nodded.

They pulled down a back alley and parked. Ianto readied his gun in one hand, and held the rift monitor in his other as he got out of the car. "A bit further up, and to the left, it seems."

Tosh eyed the gun. "I thought you said minor."

Sheepishly, Ianto lowered his gun, but he did not put it away. Their jaunt into the Beacons was supposed to minor too, he recalled. "You can never be too careful."

"Let's go, then, shall we?" Ianto could not help but notice that her gun stay holstered.

The most Ianto expected to find was an alien artefact, perhaps the size of a thimble. Instead, they found a body.

* * *

A big, black unmarked van pulled up behind the SUV, and Jack emerged from the driver's seat looking only a little less than completely annoyed. He walked up to the pair, with Owen trailing behind with his medical kit.

"What's this?" Jack asked.

"Minor rift activity. Not big enough to warrant a threat, but we found this," Ianto said, gesturing to the body that was face down on the pavement. Neither Tosh nor Ianto had moved it, agreeing it was better if they let Owen look at it. It was blackened, but not burned, and very much naked. They had spent their time cordoning off the area to keep suspicious onlookers away. Ianto hated when these things happened in the daytime. It made hiding what they were doing so much harder.

Owen knelt beside it, and placed his gloved hand on its neck. "It's alive."

Ianto raised his eyebrows, and Tosh's eyes widened. They had only checked cursorily, but they had been sure it was dead.

"Only barely," Owen reassured. "Right, let's get this into the van."

Jack snapped his fingers and pointed at Ianto, and then at the van. "You're driving that thing. Owen, take the SUV. Tosh, with me. Comb the area for any objects. Could be that this is victim of an object that came through the rift."

Tosh nodded, her eyes questioning, showing that she had already calculated that they would be walking back.

"It's a lovely day, Tosh." Jack smiled. "Could do with a walk, and we're not _that_ far away from the Plass."

There was a bang as Owen got into the SUV when he hit his knees on the steering wheel. "You see?" he yelled, "This is why we don't let women drive the bloody SUV."

Ianto shook his head, and got into the van. He backed out, and followed Owen to the hub with the body. The van still smelled like Romans, all leathery and musty, and Ianto wondered how many men could really claim to be able to pick out the smell of Roman soldiers. If Jack was to be believed, there was at least two now.

Together, Ianto and Owen moved the body into the room they still referred to as the autopsy room, despite the fact it had seen its fair share of living patients.

"What's that?" Gwen asked, following Owen out of the room as he went to get supplies.

"Don't know, aside from it is human and alive…" Owen's voice trailed off as he moved further away, accompanied by Gwen's footsteps.

"Ianto?" a voice rasped. Ianto turned around. There was no one in the room except for him and the blackened body. He stared at it. "Ianto… why aren't you dead?"

The lips were barely moving, but Ianto knew that it came from the body. "Who are you?" he kept his voice low.

The body didn't answer.


	9. Take Me

Tosh was smiling when she came back. Smiling. You had to hand it to Jack, Ianto thought. The man knew how to take advantage of any situation, and somehow put the team back together.

The two had only found a mangled piece of technology that was obviously advanced, and human in design, but so destroyed it was difficult to discern its purpose.

The look on Jack's face told Ianto that he knew what it was, and Ianto had a good guess too just from seeing Jack's expression, though he didn't get a good look at device. What to do with his guess, Ianto didn't know. Jack had made it very clear how he felt about Ianto's investigations.

The body didn't speak again, Ianto never told anyone that it did, and Jack called the case closed. No one protested. It was just a body that came through the rift, and it was on the verge of death, after all. When it died, there would be no case to follow up on anyway.

And it did exactly that, while they were eating Chinese in the boardroom.

"Couldn't wait till morning could he?" Owen moaned, shrugging off his white coat and returning to his now cold food.

"What's wrong?" Jack asked.

"The patient died. Now I'll be stuck here all night doing the paperwork."

"I'll take care of it," Jack offered. Owen was quick to accept.

Ianto knew better. He pottered around the Hub, waiting for everyone to go, and then pretended to leave as well. No one knew the CCTVs in the Hub and the Plass better than he did -well, except maybe Jack- and if anyone could get away with spying, it was him.

He watched Jack dispose of technology found by the body, then go down into the autopsy room. His mouth was moving, talking, though to whom it was hard to say. Could have been himself, but Ianto suspected it was the body. Then Jack shook his head, and took the body out. As he was about to disappear into the next room and appear on the main hub camera, he glanced at the CCTV camera, and as if an after thought, pressed something on his wristband. There was a small blip on the screen and Jack was gone. Jack was no longer on cameras, but none of the doors had been opened and the SUV was still in the garage. An hour later, the tracker on the SUV began to move and Ianto nervously watched the small dot that represented Jack traverse the Cardiff roads.

The dot went as far as quay at Barry, and, judging by how long the it stayed stationary, Jack had parked there. Quickly, Ianto accessed the CCTV. It was an older camera, with pictures only being taken every few seconds. It made it seem like Jack was moving with lightening fast speed. A boat pulled up just as dawn was about to break, and Jack left.

Desperately, Ianto tried to enhance the image of the ship, but it was far too grainy. Ianto went over his options, grabbed a cup of coffee, and left the Hub, careful not to trip any alarms. Grabbing a taxi, he directed it to the SUV's GPS coordinates.

He had only two options now, he realised as he watched the sun come up, and he wasn't sure he liked either of them.

* * *

Ianto was waiting next to the SUV, wondering if it wouldn't be better to hide and then bribe the boat's owner later and find out where Jack was going a bit more privately when the decision was made for him. The boat was coming, and there was no way to hide his presence. Ianto found himself pacing, trying to be rid of the nervous energy as Jack's boat came slowly, but inexorably, closer. Jack was off the boat before it properly docked, and he stalked down the pier, his great coat flowing out behind him in dark looking waves. His face was more threatening than storm cloud, and Ianto found the majority of his concentration directed to trying to slow down his heartbeat. It was too late to rethink his options now.

"You're angry," Ianto said as soon as Jack was near him

"You bet your ass I am." Jack hand twisted into Ianto's collar the moment he reached him, and he pushed him against the SUV. "I told you to stay out of this!" he shouted.

Ianto said nothing. Jack's face was so close to his, and his body heat warmed him. Unbidden, he remembered the falling pterodactyl, and how they rolled away from it in a mass of tangled limbs. All that resentment and desire passing between them in a few- too few- mingled breaths.

"How many times, Ianto?" Jack yelled. "How many times are you going to commit mutiny?"

"For every time you're wrong, sir." Ianto did not break eye contact. "I told you, you need me."

Jack stared into Ianto's eyes, his own burning with a fury that Ianto never wanted to see again. He pushed Ianto roughly against the door of the SUV again before letting go, and he turned around.

Bending over to breathe, Ianto managed to say, "you can't tell me I was wrong."

"About Lisa? You were."

"I wasn't."

"Well, I wasn't either."

"No." Ianto admitted, surprised at how easily he accepted it. "But this. This is something different."

"How is it?" Jack's voice was low, scarily so. The man had moods like a Rubik's cube.

Ianto didn't answer. He didn't feel he needed to. The wind came across the water, cooling the air and Ianto shivered as he adjusted his suit jacket. "I'm sorry, sir," he said finally. "But you really should have known better. You should have known I would have figured this out."

There was silence as Jack clasped his hands behind his back, and looked out over the bay. Finally, he said, "I blame it on Iwan."

"Blame it on yourself. If you hadn't pretended like you didn't know Beth Ann's name, I may not have looked into this at all."

"So, anytime I do anything remotely suspicious, you look into it?"

"Of course I do, sir." Whether or not he figured it out was a different matter. He still had no idea what the significance of Jack's severed hand was. "No one knows more about Torchwood than I do."

"I'll say. All right, Ianto. It's truth time." Jack turned around to face him. He wasn't frowning so completely anymore, and Ianto took that to be a good sign. "Tell me what you know."

"The negative rift spikes indicate that it's possible for the rift to take away. That it does not just give us the dregs of the rest of the universe. It pushes, and pulls, not too unlike an ocean tide."

Jack nodded at the analogy. "So, what makes you think anything is being covered up?"

"Aside from the ransacking of Iwan's house, and your suspiciously tacit disavowal of knowing Beth Ann? Or the vault files that were purposely left in a state of disarray with very obvious redactions? Or the fact you left with the body?"

"Man, I have been sloppy, haven't I?"

"That's why you hired me, sir."

"I thought I hired you because you look good in a suit."

Ianto's chest tightened. "Right. Should have wore that the first time, then should I have?"

Eyes darting upward, Jack considered it. "It's not that hard to seduce me, Ianto Jones."

"I know that, sir. Aliens know that. Moss underneath rocks know that."

Jack snorted, and turned to look out at the Bristol Channel once again. There was a long silence before he started to talk again. "We can't predict the spikes, so we can't save them. All we can do, if they come back, is take care of them."

"Where? Please tell me it's not an island in the Shetlands." Those poor, poor Romans.

"Flat Holm."

Ianto wasn't sure that some scrubby island in the Bristol Channel was much better. "Is Iwan there?"

Jack didn't answer.

"Why don't we know about this?" pressed Ianto.

"What does it matter?"

"Seriously, sir?"

Jack sighed. "If you saw, you'd understand."

"Then take me."

Jack's eyebrows shot up, and then he smirked.

"Not like that, sir." Ianto, despite himself, blushed.

"You're such a tease, Ianto Jones." With that, Jack went back to the SUV and got inside. He waited for Ianto to get in before starting the car.

The ride back to the Hub was quiet, and Ianto had to stop himself from looking over at the Captain who was speeding as best he could through the morning traffic. Nothing was said, and Ianto thought that was for the best. Sometimes words weren't enough.

When Jack parked and took off his seat belt, he turned to Ianto and put his hand on his shoulder. "You should get some sleep."

"Right." Ianto nodded, and followed Jack into the Hub. They parted ways, and Ianto went to make coffee. He did not go to sleep, though. Instead, he went down into the archives and continued tidying up what remained of the forgotten prisoners of the Torchwood vaults.


	10. Sixteen Deaths to Die

Ianto woke up with a start to a hand on his shoulder.

"You've done it again," said Jack.

"What?" Ianto said, trying to make his voice sound normal. He rubbed his eyes as he looked at Jack.

"Did something to that lovely face of yours."

Ianto looked up at his monitor, firstly noticing the long stream of nonsense letters that filled one data field, and then he saw his reflection in the darker places of the screen. His face had squares all over it. He had fallen asleep on the keyboard.

Again, he rubbed his face.

"Next time I suggest a bed, maybe you'll listen. Most people do." Jack smirked.

"I couldn't sleep, sir. And I had work to do."

"Still archiving them, despite the fact you've found what you needed."

"You never know when we'll need any of this information."

"Fair enough. You ready?"

"Ready?"

"To go."

"Go where? What time is it?"

The answer to those questions were Flat Holm, and four in the morning. But Jack didn't tell him either of those. Instead, he grabbed Ianto's suit coat from the back of his chair and walked out of the archives. Ianto, in much the way it always was with Captain Jack Harkness, was helpless to do anything but follow.

They went to the same pier Ianto had found Jack on the day before, and took the same boat out across the dark waters of the Bristol Channel. Ianto never liked the sea, and he tried his best not to look at it as they cut across the water.

"My shoes interest you?" asked Jack, as the shoreline became just a distant glittering line on the horizon.

Ianto looked up at Jack, unaware that he had been staring down. "No. Just don't like water very much."

"Liar. I imagine you take a shower twice a day."

"Sometimes more," Ianto played along, though not without a hint of truth. It was almost unfair the amount of times he had been slimed with some sort of alien goo. "Don't think that's the root of my dislike, though. Not many people drown in the shower. Quite difficult to, I'd imagine."

Jack laughed, and settled his hands in his lap, his legs splayed open, as he watched the sea go by. "Shouldn't be too much longer."

"Are you okay with this, sir?" Ianto asked, though he wasn't really sure why.

"Didn't really give me a choice in the matter, did you?"

"No." Ianto frowned.

"I think…" Jack started, but he stopped. "Never mind."

Whatever Jack had wanted to say, Ianto didn't push, knowing it was always best to let Jack say things in his own time. The others in the team never really figured that out, least of which, Owen, who never learned anything simply because he could never stop pushing.

As they departed the boat, Jack turned to Ianto. "Let's go see the mess you've got yourself into."

The building Jack led Ianto into looked like an abandoned bunker from the days of the Second World War. It was hideous, hidden in a hillside, and decidedly worse for wear. He glanced at the walls, which were discolored and damp, and the ground which looked as if it would be never be clean, no matter how much one swept it. It reminded him of the vaults.

"Back again, Jack? Nothing wrong, I hope?" The woman who addressed him looked plump in her pink uniform.

"No. Just need to show my associate the premises." Jack gestured at Ianto with an open hand.

She eyed Ianto warily, noting his sartorial choices with a great deal of suspicion. "This isn't a surprise inspection, is it?"

Jack shrugged. "Not really, but it would be nice if everything is in order."

"It always is." She smiled at Jack, but when she turned to Ianto, her mood changed. Her body went rigid, and her eyes were mistrustful.

"Then nothing to worry about." Jack flashed one of his most charming smiles, and it mollified the woman immediately. Ianto stayed silent through the whole exchange, listening to the strange sounds of the bunker. Sometimes, he felt like he could hear screams, though it was hard to tell. No, rather, he didn't want to know if they were screams. Just where did Jack take him?

"Well, there is. The man you brought last night. Are you sure he wouldn't be better in hospital? He can lay there so still, one wonders if he isn't dead."

"I know. Side effect of the experiment. If you wouldn't mind taking my associate to see him."

_Experiment?_

"Right."

Ianto followed her, finding himself suddenly worried without Jack there next to him. The whole place was unnerving, what with the steel doors, slightly metallic, slightly molding smell, and the dim lighting that seemed to illuminate the hallways exclusively in sparsely populated shafts. Even more unnerving was the fact that someone had tried to cheer the dismal and dank place up with a bit of pink and periwinkle paint. It did nothing to hide what it was.

Each door had a name, and he mentally took note of each one. He paused for a moment in front of the door that read _Thomas' room_ , and then continued to follow the nurse. She had opened the door before he could read the name, but he was sure it didn't matter. He knew who was in the room.

On a bed that only seemed dirty because of the dank surroundings was the blackened body. At the sound of the door, it opened its eyes, two white specks ghosting on its dark skin, to regard him.

"Ianto?" rasped the body, its teeth horribly white in contrast to its skin. Ianto's breath caught in his throat as he stepped closer, his body unconsciously leaning over the body.

The nurse looked at Ianto warily. "That will be all," he told her curtly. For a moment, she stood her ground as she stared at him, but Ianto was used to these sorts of stand offs. He didn't like them, but he if he was determined enough he always won. In a battle of being stubborn, Ianto usually did. She left, but with her lips twisted into a complaint already prepared for Jack.

"Ianto?" the body said again.

"Iwan."

"So you know. No one ever gave you enough credit for being as smart as you are. I never did. Too jealous…" Ianto let Iwan talk. "You know, your captain said he was taking me here to avoid this meeting. 'Die on this table or on Flat Holm,' he said. 'Either way, you're not seeing Ianto again.'"

"Where did you go, Iwan?" He didn't know why he did it, but he grabbed Iwan's hand. It felt like sandpaper rubbing on his palm.

"I died," he said simply. "And it was wonderful. So right." Ianto looked him over carefully. He was bald now, and his skin hung off of him in folds. The thin, wiry man with a straw stack for hair was all but gone. Even his blue eyes seemed grayer.

"You can't have died," said Ianto cautiously. "You're here."

"I know. I think I'm dying all of our deaths for us. Only a few left."

And Ianto thought of the sixteen names he'd been avoiding thinking about for months now. Words escaped Ianto. It was becoming clear to him that this was a mental hospital. "Why is you're body like this?"

"Don't know. You know, there's nothing when you die."

"I do."

"Do you really?" he mused, his voice hissing. "In death, Canary Wharf never happened. Never will happen. Nothing will. Much like that wedding you and Lisa seemed to be dashing towards headlong. None of that exists in death. Not my jealousy. Not your love."

Then there was silence.

"I loved her, you know," Iwan said finally.

"I know."

"Hated you a little."

"I hated you too," admitted Ianto, "just a bit."

Iwan squeezed Ianto's hand, and Ianto cringed at the feeling, but he did not let go.

"Shall I die your death, Ianto? Or do you finally have the courage to do it yourself?"

Abruptly, Iwan's body went limp, his chest no longer moving up and down, and his eyes no longer focused. Ianto felt suddenly removed from his body. He could watch himself screaming for help as he clutched at Iwan's hand, watch the nurses rush in and push him aside, and he could see Jack pulling him backwards, hushing him, his mouth so close to his ear that it almost looked intimate. He felt none of this. Instead, in a detached way, he wondered what it would be like to be held by Jack, not because he was creating a scene or trying to fight something he couldn't possibly win against. Just be held.

Then Iwan's chest moved, and Ianto felt Jack's breath across his hair, and his own lungs burning in exhaustion. He could feel how powerful Jack's arms were, and the racing of his heart.

"I think I've only got my death left," whispered Iwan to the dumbfounded nurses.

Ianto wrenched himself away from Jack, stumbled through the door, and promptly began to vomit. Behind him, the chalkboard sign that said _Iwan's Room_ clattered against the steel.

He heard the door open and shut behind him, and he knew he wasn't alone.

"You know he was lying," said Jack.

"He was?" Ianto was still bent over, the acid taste of sick burning his mouth.

"Well, not lying necessarily. Just making up a reason for what's happening to him."

"What _is_ happening to him, sir?"

"Don't know. Something happened to him in the Rift… but I don't think he has much more time. The space between his deaths is getting shorter."

"I can't imagine dying over and over again."

Jack said nothing, and Ianto didn't miss the change in his demeanour. _More_ _secrets_. Instead, Jack reached over and rubbed Ianto's back. It reminded him of Lisa. Whenever he made the fool mistake of drinking spirits, she was always there with him in the toilet, or embarrassingly enough, on the pavement, compassionately rubbing his back. She was always kind enough to wait to make fun of him after the hangover had somewhat subsided.

"Sir. I don't know." Ianto said

"Don't know what?"

"If this is wrong or not."

"Yeah. Me either."

And the two stood in the hallway in silence, listening to the haunting sounds of Flat Holm.

* * *

"Where is Beth Ann?" Ianto asked as they made their way down the hill to the docks, the taste of bile still present in his mouth.

"I've think you've seen enough today. You can come back, if you want. I won't stop you. You just have to tell me, so I can give the girls a heads up."

"She's there, though. Isn't she?"

Jack waited a moment before responding. "Yes. I found her in the vaults when I took over Torchwood."

"Her mother?"

"Still has a missing child."

Ianto felt like he wanted to vomit again. "How old is she now?"

"Hard to say. Her fifties, I imagine. But she's not that little girl her mother knew. She can't even speak. Hard to know if she understands."

"How many?"

"Sixteen. Though, I don't think for much longer."

Sixteen. That was the number of names on the list. When Iwan died, the numbers would still match. Fifteen.

"Sir, I don't understand."

"What?"

"Why hide this?"

"You know the answer to that. Seeing Iwan there, do you feel any sort of closure, Ianto?"

"No," Ianto admitted.

"That's why. We can't predict it, and these people return changed."

"But why hide it from us?"

"I was hiding it from everyone. If the other Torchwood found out, what do you think would happen to these people?"

"The other Torchwood is gone," he ground out. The the taste of sick in his moth, he could give it a name. It was Canary Wharf.

"Yes, so I don't need to keep it as secret anymore. The only problem is, who is going to take responsibility for these people if not us. Only we know what has happened here. I tell Gwen, Tosh, or maybe even Owen, and they're going to spend their time on a fruitless quest and only get hurt in the process. I need them saving the world, not worrying about invalids."

"You find time for it."

"I don't sleep, remember?"

"Then that snoring I sometimes hear?"

"When would you hear that?"

Ianto raised his eyebrows. "I never leave, sir, remember?"

"Fine, I sleep occasionally… but I do not snore."

The boat was waiting for them at the dock, and they got aboard without conversation. Ianto kept his gaze low as they cut across the bay, contemplating what had happened at Flat Holm.

"I think I would have told you sooner or later, Ianto." Jack said, interrupting Ianto's thoughts. He was standing like another Captain, namely Morgan, his leg crooked and propped on the railing and his great coat flapping in the wind.

Ianto didn't answer, didn't push.

"As you say, I'm sloppy, and I can't even be sure if it's right or wrong. I am right, though, aren't I?"

Ianto didn't answer. He just stared at the city, watching it come closer and closer.


	11. Excuses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-They Keep Killing Suzie

Despite Flat Holm, things were going well in Ianto's life, so far in that he no longer wished for death, and he found that his libido, now nearly one year absent, was starting to return. Scratch that, had been there, and he was ignoring it completely in order to indulge in self-pity.

Scratch that.

Was there, but had forgotten what he was supposed to do with it.

It was the answer, he realised, to forgetting everything. It worked for Gwen, for Owen, and -he was more than certain- Jack. Why not him? He had things he didn't want to think about, things he couldn't share. Why not bury it between the sheets?

What a Torchwood thing to do.

Wasn't that what happened with Lisa? When the pressure of Torchwood threatened to consume him, he found her. Or maybe, she found him. It was hard to say. Maybe it was that they found each other. Then, they would share everything that happened to them in frantic touches, and other times, slow caresses. Ianto smiled. He missed Lisa.

He missed that feeling.

Iwan had died his final death a few weeks back, and he grieved by burying himself in the archives, though all he really wanted was a screw, preferably against a wall. Or maybe a doorframe.

 _Right_ , Ianto said to himself. _Better get on that_. And he added it to his list of things to do.

* * *

Ianto didn't have to find excuses to go to Jack's office. He was always there, fetching dirty laundry, fielding phone calls, making Jack take said phone calls, and doing whatever manner of miscellanea people in his position did. But, at three in the afternoon, after a spate of days where the Rift had been completely inactive, Ianto entertained himself with a few notions of what to do, and considered them all carefully.

"Sir," Ianto said, announcing his presence as he stepped into Jack's office.

Jack looked up from his paperwork which Ianto had put on his desk three days ago. He raised his eyebrows.

"I've been thinking about Flat Holm," Ianto said without preamble.

Jack let out a sigh, and straightened the paperwork in front of him. Suddenly, they seemed more interesting than talking to Ianto, which never happened. _Right, Jones, you need to think of a better excuse next time._

_Wait… next time?_

"And?" Jack asked.

"The Romans..." started Ianto uncertainly, really wishing he had thought this through a bit more. "If the rift tries to correct itself, and return what it takes, then it would make sense that the Romans could be returned."

"Look at these people, Ianto. They don't come back whole."

"Maybe this time will be different. It may be the Shetlands, but it's not like the 21st century is absolutely horrible."

"Besides, we can't predict them. What you're suggesting is just leaving the Romans roam around the countryside and hope the Rift will snatch'em up before anyone notices."

Ianto spread his hands. "It was a thought."

"I mean, I don't mind the idea. I've always liked a few Romans. Good company. Real good company."

"Right."

"But I can think of a few sheep farmers who would object to the idea. Is that all?"

Ianto's eyes wandered about, trying to figure out exactly why he was there. "Yup."

Jack picked up his paperwork, his eyebrows raised, and a smile playfully appearing on his lips. "Okay then."

Ianto took that as his cue to leave and decided that today was a good day to get some fresh air.

* * *

Fresh air, it turned out, became an hour-long boat ride to Flat Holm. While he didn't really care to see the place again, he felt the ride there and back would give him enough to time to sort out his thoughts, and give him a work-related excuse that would allow him to do so.

Ianto had flirted to get into Torchwood, but never more than that. He hadn't even let himself think about sex while Lisa was in the basement, but now he was finding it hard to ignore. Much worse, the only person he could fantasize having sex with was essentially Lisa's executioner.

Damn that man's pheromones, and his innuendos. It had Ianto in knots, with no way to release himself. Plus, he was a man. It wasn't that it bothered him. Ianto had long ago accepted that he didn't really care what sex his partners were, though he knew on the whole he liked women. He had only ever dated women before. But, he had never done it with a man.

Damn, though, if Jack wasn't handsome. Dashing, even.

And if there was anyone in Torchwood up for some meaningless sex, it was definitely Jack. He corrected himself. If there was anyone in Torchwood _he_ was up for having meaningless sex with, it was Jack. The others… well, now, that was just disturbing.

"Mr. Jones," the nurse greeted him nervously. "Captain Harkness didn't say you were coming."

Ianto blinked. "Right, sorry, impromptu visit you could say."

"Inspection?"

"No. Just inquiry."

The nurse raised her eyebrows suspiciously.

Self-consciously, Ianto searched for a way to explain his presence. "Is there anything you require to operate more effectively?"

"We send the Captain a monthly report."

 _Which I'm sure he never reads._ "The Captain feels that it would be best, as per his propensity for losing paperwork, that we deal more directly," he lied smoothly, and then realized it wasn't a bad idea actually. Jack would approve.

If the nurse softened even slightly, it was minute. "Something more than the usual response of 'soon, when we get the money'?"

Ianto didn't want to overstep his bounds, so he nodded slightly. "Can't make promises, but hopefully, yes."

"We need more nurses."

Ianto frowned. Usually, when one was involved in a cover-up, they wanted the smallest amount of people involved.

"More lights," she continued. "More DVDs. I don't like them watching regular television. The news is bad enough."

Ianto nodded, and mentally noted everything she said as she continued her litany.

"Honestly, what I want more than anything is a better environment than this," she gestured to the dank hallways of the cement bunker.

"That's easier said than done." Ianto tried to keep his face neutral.

"I know." The nurse frowned. "Can you tell me what experiments these people undergone?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm not at liberty to say."

"I thought as much."

On one of the door's he saw Beth Ann's name. "How is she?"

"It's hard to tell."

"Would you mind?"

The nurse looked like she very much would have minded, but relented.

"Beth Ann?"

The girl, now a forty-year-old woman, looked up at him through straggly blond hair. He hoped that meant she knew her name.

Again, he said her name. "Beth Ann?"

Slowly, almost mechanically, she nodded.

"Do you understand me?"

The girl said nothing.

Ianto, in return, said nothing. Instead, he sat down on chair near her television set and watched her watch the images frenetically change.

"Would you mind if I kept talking?" Ianto asked.

Beth Ann blinked, but Ianto couldn't decide if that was acknowledgement or a necessary bodily function. It troubled him, this girl, ever since Jack had told him about her. If she couldn't speak, if she couldn't understand, how exactly did they know her name at all?

"Ianto," came a voice through his earpiece. "We've got a problem."

Suddenly, Ianto had other worries to attend to. There was murder, and Torchwood's name written in blood.


	12. Excorcism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-They Keep Killing Suzie, references to every episode after that except Weevil Fight Club. I mean Combat.

Suzie Costello had haunted Torchwood since her death all those months ago, but only as a hazy apparition in the back of Ianto's mind. She was never as lucid and recognizable as now. Yet, he couldn't bear to resent her as she sat in the interrogation room just as stalwart and clear-minded as she had been before she took a gun to her head and followed the sharp bang into the silence.

When they brought her back to life, Ianto stayed away. The women he felt he had so much in common with now made him feel fear. _Let Jack handle it_ , he thought. _Maybe it'll end just as it did before._

And in a strange way, it did.

She gave them the run around, and died. He wondered if it would happen again, if Suzie's stubbornness would somehow return her to Torchwood only to die again. He wondered if he was the lucky one; that when Jack put his Webley against Ianto's forehead he would be the one that would survive.

Then again. Maybe he wasn't so lucky.

Ianto shook his head, and tried to clear his thoughts. He was twenty-three. When did he become so old? He supposed that Suzie's ghost still haunted the Hub, if only in his mind.

Maybe that's why he did it, seduced Jack. He was tired of ghosts. Of Iwan. Suzie. Anne. Even his lovely Lisa. Jack was alive, and in the most beautiful and glorious of ways. Ianto could see it in the way he grinned. It was almost as if he couldn't die, and Ianto wanted to be twenty-three again and to live like death couldn't touch him too. How fitting, then, it was that he propositioned Jack in a morgue as if daring every shitty thing that ever happened to him to do it again. He could almost hear his challenge to time and death as he clutched his stopwatch in one hand and the other the nape of Jack's neck.

He was so tired of ghosts, and Jack was alive.

Ianto was alive.

* * *

The worries Ianto had carried with him seemed to be gone in so much that they didn't occupy his mind every moment. He hated to admit it, but it seemed that really all he did need to get over his two very recent brushes with death, and mortality of everyone around him was a long, very satisfying screw.

And if it, impossibly, involved a stopwatch then he wasn't going to argue with that either. He was in such a good mood that he didn't even bother to be suspicious when the Sky Gypsy made its appearance in the skies of the twenty-first century.

The questions he would have normally had, like "hadn't Jack said that people don't make it through the Rift whole?", and "wasn't that the point of Flat Holm?", were dismissed easily as he led the vagrant time travelers around the super market.

The rift, he thought, wasn't all that bad. At least they got bananas out of the whole deal.

Of course, in just over a week, he would be swallowing those words back, leaving a faint taste of bile in his mouth. In a week John was dead, and Dianne likely to be as well. One does not, it seem, go quietly through the rift.

He wanted to ask Jack about it, but he could see that Jack was more than a million miles away as he stared out from his office window; it seemed like a million years away. Ianto felt as if he had pressed the buttons on the Ghost Machine and was now glimpsing into a distant past.

In under a week, Emma had gone to London, John had committed suicide, and Dianne might as well have joined him. In under a week Ianto's world changed, he just didn't know how much until he found himself facing Owen down in the Hub with a gun in his hands. The rift, it seemed didn't just change those who went through it. It changed anyone near it. Not for the first time, Ianto wondered if he would survive long enough to make it to a Flat Holm of his own.

It wasn't fair Ianto had another ghost to add to his collection, and it wasn't even his.

Dianne.

She was never to know what her ghost did to Owen; that she would ultimately be the one to put a bullet into Jack's head. Ianto was never to know it either.

* * *

The Hub returned to how it was in the old days, with nobody speaking to one another. The camaraderie they had only just so recently founded vanished like it had been taken away by the rift. Tosh felt abandoned by Owen, and Gwen felt betrayed. Jack didn't say much about anything so it was hard to know just what was bothering him, and Ianto left his work in the archives so he could concentrate on the one ghost he could exorcise: Beth Ann.

He had thought about it long and hard when Jack returned to the Hub after John died, his coat stinking of car exhaust and his shoulders heavy with something Ianto couldn't describe. What happened to those left behind was never made more clear to him, and though there was no information on how Emma's parent's had coped at the disappearance of their one and only daughter, Ianto had a vivid imagination. He need only put himself in that position and know how not knowing would tear his heart apart.

Even if he didn't imagine it, he knew what Beth Ann's disappearance was doing. Shitty as his dad was, Ianto knew what happened to a people once your existence was inexplicably erased.

Beth Ann.

The name rambled through his head while he looked up her mother's address. It had been nearly a year since her daughter's disappearance, and he imagined she was still stuck in some sort of limbo where she hoped her daughter could come back.

Ianto wondered if he should show her Beth Ann, if she would even believe it to be true. What would be better, he wondered, knowing your daughter was alive but changed in ways more frightening than one should ever imagine, or to accept that she was never coming back? What knowledge was more important?

And so it was, after Owen's suicidal need to join what Ianto could only deem as a bizarre Weevil fight club, Ianto snuck out of the Hub to some sandwiches for the team and a newspaper with the headline: Missing Taylor Girl Found Dead.

_The body of Beth Ann Taylor, who has been missing since January of last year, has been found near where she was last seen alive. The evidence points to a convicted child molester, Mark Goodson, who was found dead under suspicious circumstances in July._

_"I've always said I just wanted to know what happened to my daughter," said Ms. Taylor. "I just wish that it didn't have to be this. But I know at least she is with God now."_

That was enough for Ianto to read. He didn't need to know anymore. He set the paper down, purchased the sandwiches, and as he walked to the Hub he felt as if one less ghost was haunting him.

When he returned, the Hub was quiet, save for the faraway tapping of Tosh's computer.

"Weevils again," Tosh said, smiling as Ianto handed her the sandwich and a packet or crisps. "Owen and Gwen went to take care of it." Ianto nodded knowingly and went up to Jack's office.

Jack was still being quiet, so Ianto matched it as he solemnly delivered the lunch if only because he didn't know what to do with a quiet Jack. It was unnatural.

"I keep tabs, you know," Jack said, grabbing his sandwich and unwrapping it. "I keep track just in case."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ianto returned carefully.

"The patients at Flat Holm. I know you faked Beth Ann's death." Jack smiled, but it was different from what Ianto was used to, like it was muscle memory and nothing more. "Of course, the red flag was when you blamed it on Goodson."

"Didn't think it was a bad idea to blame someone who was dead, and probably capable of doing it."

Jack nodded, and took a bite out of his sandwich. When Ianto turned to leave, he asked, "Do you think you did the right thing?"

At the door, Ianto paused and reviewed the reasoning he had been replaying in his head for weeks since Dianne, John and Emma. "Yes," he answered without turning around.

Ianto knew what damage the rift could do as well as Jack did, and he guessed that was why he had a gun pointed at Owen only a few weeks later. He was never going to let anyone open the rift, even if it meant losing the one thing that made him feel alive.


End file.
